WHAT IS, IS GOD

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A devotee of Ramana Maharshi, who had been with him about twenty five years, had a son that died, and he was grief-stricken. So he begged to have an audience with Ramana. Now Ramana rests from twelve to two. He agreed to see his devotee. When the devotee entered the hall, Ramana was reclining on his couch with his eyes closed, and he started to cry and tell him all his troubles, how much he loved his son. And then he asked Ramana, “What is God?”

Ramana didn’t answer. He kept still for about fifteen minutes. Then he opened his eyes and he said very softly,
“What is, is God.”

What is, is God. It’s like when someone asks the question, “Is the world real?” The world, by itself, is an illusion, but God, as the world, is real. As we progress we find there never was a God, so there never was a world. But for the sake of talking, because God is, the universe is. Everything, from the lowliest microbe to the fullest galaxy, is God in expression.
Everything is God. Every leaf, every piece of clay, every star, every planet has no basis for its existence, by itself.
Because God is, everything else is.

That’s what Ramana meant when he answered, “What is, is God.” He was trying to explain to the devotee, “Your son
dying, that is God. Your son living, that is God. There’s no real difference. Only in your mind.”

We differentiate only in the mind. If the mind were made quiescent, quiet, there would be no differentiation between
death and life. We make the differentiation because we think. It’s a mental concept that someone dies, and that’s bad, but someone lives and that’s good. There’s no such differentiation. There is only God, and everything that exists, everything, is God. There can be nothing apart from God.
But then I say that God doesn’t exist, except in your mind. That is the reason that, in reality, no thing exists.
Do you follow that?

As long as you think, there will be existence, person, place and thing, but when you stop thinking there’s no room for existence because there cannot be the silence and existence. Everything that appears to be opposes the silence.
The silence is consciousness, absolute reality, sat-chit-ananda.
The self exists as itself, yet when you begin to modify it you say, “Well, God exists.” God is the first modification of consciousness, and it’s God’s job to create the world, and then to dissolve the world, and then to create the world.
Who gave God that job?
Henry? Henry didn’t do it. Who did?
Why would God want to create worlds, universes, and then dissolve them, and after a period of time bring them back into existence?

Yet this is what we read about in all the scriptures. This information is for the ajnani, for the man steeped in ignorance. You have to explain to this man how the world became existent, or he will not be satisfied. You therefore go into all the modifications. There is the self and the self is consciousness. Consciousness modifies itself, and you have God. God modifies itself, and you have existence.

Ramana realized that if he explained this to the devotee, the devotee wouldn’t understand. If he told the devotee that only the self exists, and your son didn’t die because he was never born, it would be too much for the devotee to comprehend. Therefore, instead, he said God is. What is, is God. It made the devotee feel better, for he realized that his son was in God’s hands, and all is well.

But yet, if we have a questioning mind, we question, “Where did God come from?” and “Why does God appear as all these things?
What is its purpose?”
Most of us know there is no purpose. No thing exists the way it appears. Your real nature is pure awareness. Pure awareness is the universal. There is no place for anything else. In other words,
you cannot have existence as it appears and pure awareness. Otherwise you would have diversification, as the appearance shows you. There’s a beautiful tree, there’s a sky, there are flowers, there are animals, there are insects. If pure awareness, or the self, is self-contained, how could there be anything else? Where would the room come from?

It’s just like space. When you have a room filled with furniture, what happens to the space it takes up? And then you take the furniture out of the room. Has the space changed? Nothing has happened to the space. The space is the same whether the room is filled with furniture, or not. And so it is with reality. Reality exists. The self exists as the self.
But it appears as if there are things in the universe, as if there is a universe. There are people, there are animals, there are planets, there’s the vegetable kingdom, the mineral kingdom. All this appears real. You therefore have to ask the question,
“To whom does this appear?
Who sees this?”
You know by now it’s the I.
The I is the culprit. If it weren’t for the I there would be no universe, there would be no God, there would be no creation.

ROBERT ADAMS
The Collected Works of
Robert Adams, Volume 1, What is, is God

May 30, 1991